Political Discussion Thread (With Rules)

[Lord Liaden]

It's hardly news when a politician takes credit for something he or she just coincidentally happened to be in the same space-time with. Besides, both Trump and many of his supporters have repeatedly demonstrated lack of concern over facts.

[Armitage]

So Ford are rethinking their decisions on where to manufacture cars, at least partially because of the anticipated favourable business environment in the US under The Trump.

 

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-38497898

 

Is he going to be able to perform the miracle of returning industrial capacity to the States? 700 jobs doesn't seem like many. Is $1million invested per job a reasonable return or is Ford gettin' all poh-liddical?

 

 

We already have massive industrial capacity in the US.  We have less industrial jobs due to increased automation and efficiency.  Manufacturing output has more than doubled since 1975, while employment in that sector has declined by about 30% over the same period.  Unless manufacturers are willing to refit with 40 year old technology and/or stop all further advancement, it's a trend that's likely to continue, no matter how many new factories generate temporary spikes.

[megaplayboy]

Yep. For that matter, there's a non-zero prospect that up to half of existing work can or will be replaced by automation in the next 20-30 years. It's an impressive feat for a public issue to get less discussion by the press and politicians than climate change, but this issue pulls it off.

[Ranxerox]

Yes, this my issue with self-driving cars.  It is likely that soon truck driving, bus driving and taxi cab driving will all be jobs of the past, and those who perform those jobs join the ranks of the technologically dispossessed.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

I've preached for years that our focus needs to be on education. We need to be forward thinking and provide the skills for people to be successful in the future. But...education in this country is generally a mixed bag at best.

[Lawnmower Boy]

Grr.

 

First, is it accurate to say that American manufacturing capacity has increased since 1975? Statistics do show this, and the result has been an avalanche of futurological claims about how the robots are making more stuff and soon they will be making all the stuff, and no-one will have jobs, and it'll be Soylent Green for all those jerks who were mean to us in high school. (Uhmmm, Steve. . . Wait. That sounds homoerotic. Never mind me, Ima gonna go have a gay panic.)

 

But, hey, look, a quote: (which comes from a pdf, so only click if you're good on crufting up your computer.)

 

This report argues that this dominant view on the loss of manufacturing jobs is fundamentally mistaken. Manufacturing lost jobs because manufacturing lost output, and it lost output because its ability to compete in global markets—some manipulated by egregious foreign mercantilist policies, others supported by better national competiveness policies, like lower corporate tax rates—declined significantly. In 2010, 13 of the 19 U.S. manufacturing sectors (employing 55 percent of manufacturing workers) were producing less than they there were in 2000 in terms of inflation-adjusted output. 2 Moreover, we assert that the government’s official calculation of manufacturing output growth, and by definition productivity, is significantly overstated. Overall, U.S. manufacturing output actually fell by 11 percent during a period when GDP increased by 17 percent.3 The alarm bells are largely silent for two reasons: government statistics significantly overstate the change in U.S. manufacturing output, and most economists and pundits do not extend their analysis beyond one macro-level number (change in real manufacturing value added relative to GDP). But the conventional wisdom that U.S. manufacturing job loss is simply a result of productivity-driven restructuring (akin to how U.S. agriculture lost jobs but is still healthy) is wrong, or at least not the whole story. This report contends that the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs is a function of slow growth in output (and, in most sectors, actual loss of output) caused by a steep increase in the manufactured goods trade deficit.

 

Second, what about those robots? The problem here is that "robot" is a new name for an old stock scare story. Going way back, the idea that something something was putting humans out of work seems to predate the Luddites. Is a jig/pattern/gauge/assembly line, or, heck, a flying shuttle, a "robot?" Sure, in the sense that the capitailst weighs the costs of a fixed capital investment that reduces the labour component of manufacturing a given good against the loss of flexibility. If you build a plant that "automatically" produces automobile frames in 1928 fast enough that it can literally produce all the car frames needed by American industry, you'd better have a plan for in case Citroen (and Chrysler) bring frame construction to the industry in seven years! This is why there have been "robots" in manufacturing since forever, and yet there are also people. It's a story of production rates, schedules, and consumer demand. Some things can be "mass produced," and other things can't be. READ THIS BOOK.

 

With these philosophical observations and one shouty book recommendation in mind, are there any facts at hand that contest this stylised story. Why, yes! As noted in the pdf above, American manufacturing employment took a steep tumble in the Reagan years, then held steady through 1998, then shrank dramatically in the first decade of the 21st Century, losing almost a third of employment. Were these guys replaced by robots? Then we would expect a significant increase in productivity. In fact, productivity growth has been all but stagnant for . . . some time. (Some scholars say 2205, others later. More recently, it has been declining.] How can manufacturing employment shrink without robots. Oh, I don't know, something about outsourcing? Yeah, I think I read something about that once. 

 

In the midst of all of this, several stylised facts are deployed like bludgeons to hammer home the point that the future is so shady that we've all got to wear those funky SAD goggles. The first is that Google has been working on self-driving cars since, what, 2003, and will have the bugs worked out Real Soon Now. I can't even . . . LYou don't like driving? Want to read on your way to work? There's already a solution to this problem! Call a cab! You're not going to do that, though, because you don't want to pay that kind of money. The self-driving car will appear when the self-driving car is a lot cheaper than a cab. Well, at the moment, the self-driving car requires a quarter-million in hardware in each vehicle and a massive computer network support apparatus. Will this ever be cheaper than a taxi driver? Probably not, and even if it were, I think much cheaper is . . . extremely ambitious. And this sets aside the basic problem that Google hasn't cracked the self-driving car problem, and has no real idea how to do so. 

 

But, hey, never mind that, because there's a self-driving truck! Now there's a technology that's going to be easy to implement, says I to the umpteenth driver tthis week who has pulled into our loading bay instead of the mall's loading bay, next door. Maybe it'll be the driver who is on disability, so that he can't swamp his own truck! (And who will not be employed long, if the dispatcher has anything to say about it . . . ) Except for intermodal deliveries, which are already highly susceptible to "automation" via roadtrains, most trucks require someone to be in charge of swamping and other delivery duties. Now, the prospect of having someone in the cab who is paid as an unskilled labourer instead of a driver (they're just there to unload the truck, and maybe take over from the autopilot in case of emergencies, which, by the way, the company is totally commited to repairing or replacing in the next fiscal quarter) is attractive, but that's not replacing the job --just the wage. It's even almost like that's a feature, and not a bug. . . 

 

Now, about Steve, former high school jock, oh he thinks he so cool with his perm, who is now on his way to the Soylent Green factory on account of not taking Algebra 12. The argument here is that since all the good jobs are going to go to college graduates, more education is the solution to our problems. Without being opposed to education, much less liberal arts education, I am going to chime in with some skepticism. First, this talk is coming from our public intellectuals. And where do our public intellectuals work, these days? It's kind of like taking a poll of the literary world two hundred years ago about whether church attendance and tithing was key to a prosperous society. (It turns out that it was, and it's a complete coincidence that almost the entire reading public was clergymen). To flip the historical analogy a bit, there has never been a worse-education technical working class than the one that existed in the world in 1946, due to assorted wartime disruptions in the educational process. And yet this was the generation that got us to the Moon. The moral of the story, I suggest, is that work experience counts for something here. 

 

In fact, I'm going to suggest that work experience counts for a lot. In spite of our high-school fuelled anger, it is likely that Steve is actually a quite productive member of society. I work with a lot of Steves, and I can tell you, twenty years of experience makes up for a lot. Steve built up those twenty years of experience while we were diddlilng our way through college and university and trying to get on full time with a business that would pay the bills. Thanks to "first hired, last fired," Steve is always going to be there, at least until he retires, when he will be replaced by the kids that we, of course, had and raised wihile we were going to endless school and building up our un-repayable student loans.

 

Oh, wait, I guess we didn't have those kids, did we? Uhm, Houston? I think we have a problem, here. 

[womble]

I think he's lying about his role in this decision. http://www.msnbc.com/rachel-maddow-show/trump-keeps-claiming-credit-jobs-he-had-nothing-do

MSN is being disingenuous, from what I saw. I make no claim to infallibility, but I thought the talking head which I can paraphrase as saying "We decided to invest more in the US plant instead of building the new plant in Mexico, largely due to the anticipated favourable business environment under Trump when he finally gets his ass in the Big Chair," was a Ford guy. MSN may not be lying when they say "Ford weren't going to close the Kentucky plant", and I'm sure Trump does, indeed, claim credit where it is anything but due but that's not the question at issue (and it's common practice in all walks of life).

[Christopher R Taylor]

I remember when Obama was elected, he was the WORST PERSON WHO EVER LIVED according to Republicans and THE BEST PERSON WHO EVER LIVED by Democrats.  Reverse that for Bush previously.  And for Clinton previously, back to the other way around.  Every election its the same thing, only the rhetoric gets more extreme, excessive, and ridiculous each election.  Now we're told alternately that Donald Trump will single-handedly turn America into utopia or that he's a Nazi monster who'll throw everyone in camps while nuking the world.  Its ridiculous.  They're all self important, greedy scumbags.

[Old Man]

 I'm sure Trump does, indeed, claim credit where it is anything but due but that's not the question at issue (and it's common practice in all walks of life).

 

Which makes it okay, right?

 

It's just incredible how people keep setting the bar lower for this guy.  Well, of course he lies, but it's okay, everyone lies, right?  Of course he steals, and defrauds, and rapes, but it's okay, because they all do that, right?

 

 

They're all self important, greedy scumbags.

 

You know, even if you're right, I really think the current president elect takes it to a new, frighteningly unacceptable extreme.

[Pariah]

I remember when Obama was elected, he was the WORST PERSON WHO EVER LIVED according to Republicans and THE BEST PERSON WHO EVER LIVED by Democrats.  Reverse that for Bush previously.  And for Clinton previously, back to the other way around.  Every election its the same thing, only the rhetoric gets more extreme, excessive, and ridiculous each election.  Now we're told alternately that Donald Trump will single-handedly turn America into utopia or that he's a Nazi monster who'll throw everyone in camps while nuking the world.  Its ridiculous.  They're all self important, greedy scumbags.

 

I've been a registered (if not always enthusiastic) Republican since the Reagan administration, and I'm pretty sure that Donald Trump is the WORST PERSON WHO EVER LIVED.

 

(YMMV, of course.)

[Starlord]

POTUS probably...person, no...I don't know of any acts of mass genocide on his resume, yet.

[Old Man]

As though defunding Planned Parenthood and repealing the ACA won't have a similar effect.

[Tom]

As though defunding Planned Parenthood and repealing the ACA won't have a similar effect.

I think we can lay that on Republicans in general w/o singling out Trump. I'm fairly certain most (if not all) the 'R' candidates would have been more than happy to sign off on either of those goals.

[womble]

Which makes it okay, right?

 

It's just incredible how people keep setting the bar lower for this guy.  Well, of course he lies, but it's okay, everyone lies, right?  Of course he steals, and defrauds, and rapes, but it's okay, because they all do that, right?

 

 

 

You know, even if you're right, I really think the current president elect takes it to a new, frighteningly unacceptable extreme.

I didn't say it was right. But, and I think (from an outsider's perspective, this seems like it should be important) one of the big things that Trump voters picked up on as a Good Thing that must've outweighed all the impossibly egregiously Bad Things about him, was the promise to return manufacturing jobs to the US which had previously been "offshored" (or, in the case of manufacturing capacity built and staffed in Mexico to supply the US market, "cross-bordered", perhaps). Such possibilities did not seem real to the liberal-leaning (and maybe the right-leaning, I don't know) economics establishment at the time, and there was ridicule heaped upon the claim. It will be interesting to see whether these 700 jobs by a major manufacturer are the thin end of the "US manufacturing renaissance", or largely a publicity stunt for Ford to garner home-country approbation, and not followed up by other heavy industries and in larger number. And if these changes do, in fact, materialise, I'll be interested to see the reaction of those who said, as I did, that it wasn't possible. Whether it is possible remains to be seen. But diverting the issue into his appalling character (the guy disgusts me too) doesn't do the liberal argument against the monster any favours if it ignores any actual successes of his regime.

 

So the question remains to be answered when we have further data: is his rhetoric providing an environment for US business to thrive based on domestic production like "everyone" said couldn't be done? 

[TheDarkness]

I didn't say it was right. But, and I think (from an outsider's perspective, this seems like it should be important) one of the big things that Trump voters picked up on as a Good Thing that must've outweighed all the impossibly egregiously Bad Things about him, was the promise to return manufacturing jobs to the US which had previously been "offshored" (or, in the case of manufacturing capacity built and staffed in Mexico to supply the US market, "cross-bordered", perhaps). Such possibilities did not seem real to the liberal-leaning (and maybe the right-leaning, I don't know) economics establishment at the time, and there was ridicule heaped upon the claim. It will be interesting to see whether these 700 jobs by a major manufacturer are the thin end of the "US manufacturing renaissance", or largely a publicity stunt for Ford to garner home-country approbation, and not followed up by other heavy industries and in larger number. And if these changes do, in fact, materialise, I'll be interested to see the reaction of those who said, as I did, that it wasn't possible. Whether it is possible remains to be seen. But diverting the issue into his appalling character (the guy disgusts me too) doesn't do the liberal argument against the monster any favours if it ignores any actual successes of his regime.

 

So the question remains to be answered when we have further data: is his rhetoric providing an environment for US business to thrive based on domestic production like "everyone" said couldn't be done? 

The wage difference from the developing world to the developed world means that the manufacturing center of the world will always, assuming the current economic model, be in the developing world. To base the economics of a developed country based on production either requires production models that require far less workers, which means little added employment except in tech, or having wages like a developing country, both of which would be disastrous for consumer spending, unless, in the former, a significant portion of the workforce were actually working in jobs that require higher eduction.

[TheDarkness]

Grr.

 

First, is it accurate to say that American manufacturing capacity has increased since 1975? Statistics do show this, and the result has been an avalanche of futurological claims about how the robots are making more stuff and soon they will be making all the stuff, and no-one will have jobs, and it'll be Soylent Green for all those jerks who were mean to us in high school. (Uhmmm, Steve. . . Wait. That sounds homoerotic. Never mind me, Ima gonna go have a gay panic.)

 

But, hey, look, a quote: (which comes from a pdf, so only click if you're good on crufting up your computer.)

 

This report argues that this dominant view on the loss of manufacturing jobs is fundamentally mistaken. Manufacturing lost jobs because manufacturing lost output, and it lost output because its ability to compete in global markets—some manipulated by egregious foreign mercantilist policies, others supported by better national competiveness policies, like lower corporate tax rates—declined significantly. In 2010, 13 of the 19 U.S. manufacturing sectors (employing 55 percent of manufacturing workers) were producing less than they there were in 2000 in terms of inflation-adjusted output. 2 Moreover, we assert that the government’s official calculation of manufacturing output growth, and by definition productivity, is significantly overstated. Overall, U.S. manufacturing output actually fell by 11 percent during a period when GDP increased by 17 percent.3 The alarm bells are largely silent for two reasons: government statistics significantly overstate the change in U.S. manufacturing output, and most economists and pundits do not extend their analysis beyond one macro-level number (change in real manufacturing value added relative to GDP). But the conventional wisdom that U.S. manufacturing job loss is simply a result of productivity-driven restructuring (akin to how U.S. agriculture lost jobs but is still healthy) is wrong, or at least not the whole story. This report contends that the loss of U.S. manufacturing jobs is a function of slow growth in output (and, in most sectors, actual loss of output) caused by a steep increase in the manufactured goods trade deficit.

 

Second, what about those robots? The problem here is that "robot" is a new name for an old stock scare story. Going way back, the idea that something something was putting humans out of work seems to predate the Luddites. Is a jig/pattern/gauge/assembly line, or, heck, a flying shuttle, a "robot?" Sure, in the sense that the capitailst weighs the costs of a fixed capital investment that reduces the labour component of manufacturing a given good against the loss of flexibility. If you build a plant that "automatically" produces automobile frames in 1928 fast enough that it can literally produce all the car frames needed by American industry, you'd better have a plan for in case Citroen (and Chrysler) bring frame construction to the industry in seven years! This is why there have been "robots" in manufacturing since forever, and yet there are also people. It's a story of production rates, schedules, and consumer demand. Some things can be "mass produced," and other things can't be. READ THIS BOOK.

 

With these philosophical observations and one shouty book recommendation in mind, are there any facts at hand that contest this stylised story. Why, yes! As noted in the pdf above, American manufacturing employment took a steep tumble in the Reagan years, then held steady through 1998, then shrank dramatically in the first decade of the 21st Century, losing almost a third of employment. Were these guys replaced by robots? Then we would expect a significant increase in productivity. In fact, productivity growth has been all but stagnant for . . . some time. (Some scholars say 2205, others later. More recently, it has been declining.] How can manufacturing employment shrink without robots. Oh, I don't know, something about outsourcing? Yeah, I think I read something about that once. 

 

In the midst of all of this, several stylised facts are deployed like bludgeons to hammer home the point that the future is so shady that we've all got to wear those funky SAD goggles. The first is that Google has been working on self-driving cars since, what, 2003, and will have the bugs worked out Real Soon Now. I can't even . . . LYou don't like driving? Want to read on your way to work? There's already a solution to this problem! Call a cab! You're not going to do that, though, because you don't want to pay that kind of money. The self-driving car will appear when the self-driving car is a lot cheaper than a cab. Well, at the moment, the self-driving car requires a quarter-million in hardware in each vehicle and a massive computer network support apparatus. Will this ever be cheaper than a taxi driver? Probably not, and even if it were, I think much cheaper is . . . extremely ambitious. And this sets aside the basic problem that Google hasn't cracked the self-driving car problem, and has no real idea how to do so. 

 

But, hey, never mind that, because there's a self-driving truck! Now there's a technology that's going to be easy to implement, says I to the umpteenth driver tthis week who has pulled into our loading bay instead of the mall's loading bay, next door. Maybe it'll be the driver who is on disability, so that he can't swamp his own truck! (And who will not be employed long, if the dispatcher has anything to say about it . . . ) Except for intermodal deliveries, which are already highly susceptible to "automation" via roadtrains, most trucks require someone to be in charge of swamping and other delivery duties. Now, the prospect of having someone in the cab who is paid as an unskilled labourer instead of a driver (they're just there to unload the truck, and maybe take over from the autopilot in case of emergencies, which, by the way, the company is totally commited to repairing or replacing in the next fiscal quarter) is attractive, but that's not replacing the job --just the wage. It's even almost like that's a feature, and not a bug. . . 

 

Now, about Steve, former high school jock, oh he thinks he so cool with his perm, who is now on his way to the Soylent Green factory on account of not taking Algebra 12. The argument here is that since all the good jobs are going to go to college graduates, more education is the solution to our problems. Without being opposed to education, much less liberal arts education, I am going to chime in with some skepticism. First, this talk is coming from our public intellectuals. And where do our public intellectuals work, these days? It's kind of like taking a poll of the literary world two hundred years ago about whether church attendance and tithing was key to a prosperous society. (It turns out that it was, and it's a complete coincidence that almost the entire reading public was clergymen). To flip the historical analogy a bit, there has never been a worse-education technical working class than the one that existed in the world in 1946, due to assorted wartime disruptions in the educational process. And yet this was the generation that got us to the Moon. The moral of the story, I suggest, is that work experience counts for something here. 

 

In fact, I'm going to suggest that work experience counts for a lot. In spite of our high-school fuelled anger, it is likely that Steve is actually a quite productive member of society. I work with a lot of Steves, and I can tell you, twenty years of experience makes up for a lot. Steve built up those twenty years of experience while we were diddlilng our way through college and university and trying to get on full time with a business that would pay the bills. Thanks to "first hired, last fired," Steve is always going to be there, at least until he retires, when he will be replaced by the kids that we, of course, had and raised wihile we were going to endless school and building up our un-repayable student loans.

 

Oh, wait, I guess we didn't have those kids, did we? Uhm, Houston? I think we have a problem, here. 

I agree in part, but, as someone who spent most of their life being the guy with long experience short on degrees(went to college later in life), there are waaaay more people at the lower end than are needed for production, and the people who have decades of experience know they cannot leave their jobs without often facing a loss of opportunity, because employers can pick and choose, and are not going to ever match the pay that one currently has because of what amounts to tenure.

 

Further, gaining that tenure often ties to generation. It was far easier to achieve if one started one's job by the eighties, far harder after, when the rise in pay often did not keep pace with inflation. Less stability meant greater need to find a new job that did pay what one needed to survive, which meant less job stability due to not being "first in, last out".

 

Many are not particularly compassionate to workers who have less expertise, but the solution is not to not try to allow as many people as possible to reach a level of education, including trade schools, that might allow them more opportunity. And not turn that opportunity into the equivalent of payday loans for an education that is beneficial to society.

[TrickstaPriest]

All the fight against global warming, all over again.  Can we handle Lamar Smith the Canadian way?  >_>

 

AI is already starting to disrupt white collar work in Japan.  Solar is rapidly becoming a thing, which is fascinating to me.  But a lot of the talk about 'new technology' creating ;new jobs' feels less like retraining people who lost their jobs and more like grabbing onto more new young workers...

[Lawnmower Boy]

 

Newsflash: White collar work being disrupted in faroff land of 1946!

 

It's getting to the point that when I hear the word automation, I reach for my revolver. I have no idea who the first person to "disrupt white collar" work was, but I know that he wasn't the clever jackass down at the Temple of Inannna who came up with the idea of a standardised table of markings on clay tablets. Sure, he made token manufacturers obsolete. Just think of all those hardworking people, making tiny little representations of sheep, enclosing them in clay envelopes, and then rolling carefully-carved seals across them. All that work, replaced by some nerd with a reed stylus. 

 

I'm not sure what the solution is. Maybe state-issued barley rations for everyone?

[dmjalund]

I just realised, the thread title is now rather dated

[Simon]

I just realised, the thread title is now rather dated

I have no idea what you're talking about...

[Iuz the Evil]

Well played

[megaplayboy]

CIA Intel report on Russian hacking to be released today instead of Monday. I guess the Intel briefing Trump got didn't go well.

[Michael Hopcroft]

CIA Intel report on Russian hacking to be released today instead of Monday. I guess the Intel briefing Trump got didn't go well.

Did you expect it to? It's hard to convince me that Trump was not completely unaware that this was going on, and as long as he benefited was OK with it. He certainly isn't going to show outrage now.

[Old Man]

...

[Kaspar Hauser]

How do people here who did not vote for Trump or the Republicans, and who look upon the acceleration of hypercapitalism and the rise of fascism throughout the Western world, go about maintaining courage and hope?  Are there specific strategies that you use, or philosophies that give you strength?